Il-iE  JOY  OF  THE 
THEATRE 


GILBERT  CANNAN 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

Irving  Pichel 

PRESENTED  BY 

Mrs.   Irving  Pichel 


9, 


# 


'*B^-^'|P*3ppH9«|^fWtr«'*M.Ji 


FELLOWSHIP  BOOKS 

EdStecTGijJMani  StratCcm 


THE  JOY  OF  THE 
THEATRE 


COPYRIGHT  1913 

By  E.  p.  DUTTON  &  CO. 


THE  JOY  OF  THE 
THEATRE 

^t£  GUEerc  Cannati 


L^.dutton  (^Com^amjMivYork, 


'CJHE(u^ficstmmf purpose  aimdatin  die-fUafhcspeaes  of  die 
Ijixiim  istfxCBacEUM^t^(uiman.(Kdrc,oimj{iissipnnidm 
&  anapaiiues,  dk  knoaa^cfiB^aiprvprnum  oj  w(iu£  ^puifii^ 
<iwilmmn6aii^isunse.just,iinceri.tderam6%^ 


IN  writing  of  the  theatre  of  our  time  he 
who  would  choose  such  a  title  might 
fairly  be  suspected  of  irony,  for  in  what 
theatre  in  England  or  the  English-speaking 
world  shall  joy  be  found?  Yet  a  sturdy  hope 
weaves  the  two  words  into  one  sentence  on 
the  threshold  of  a  book,  that  they  may  meet 
again  in  men's  minds  and,  in  due  course,  bring 
the  things  themselves  together.  Men  create 
everything  in  their  own  image  and  always  get 
exactly  what  they  deserve,  neither  more  nor 
less.  The  sins  of  the  fathers  are  visited  upon 
the  children  in  art  as  in  everything  else,  and 
the     English    nation    deserves    the    English 


*l^  theatre, 


865940 


theatre.  That,  however,  is  no  reason  why 
such  a  theatre  should  be  endured,  and  there 
are  signs  that  it  will  not  much  longer  be 
suffered  to  continue  unchanged.  All  over  the 
world  it  is  being  discovered  that  what  was 
good  enough  for  the  fathers  is  not  good  enough 
for  the  children,  and  a  generation  is  springing 
into  manhood  which  demands  the  right  to 
examine  its  heritage  and  to  discard  everything 
that  it  finds  to  be  worthless,  useless  and  injuri- 
ous. This  generation  is  discovering  that  it 
is  possible  to  rebel  against  the  sins  of  its  for- 
bears and  it  is  rebelling  with  all  its  might. 
If  in  the  delighted  excitement  of  the  struggle 
it  rebels  also  against  their  virtues,  experience 
will  bring  wisdom  and  keener  perception,  and 
the  very  violence  of  the  revolt  will  clear  the 
air  and  leave  the  next  generation  and  the  next 
and  the  next  more  free  for  constructive 
action.  Meanwhile  there  has  been  and  is  per- 
ception enough  to  see  that  the  life  of  men  can- 
not be  changed  until  a  change  has  been 
wrought  in  their  minds,  and  to  bring  this  about 

2 


there  is  no  other  instrument  than  art.     Re- 
ligion without  art  is  like  a  ship  without  sails. 
Education  is  the  preparation  of  the  human 
mind    for    the    understanding    of    art    and, 
through  art,  of  life.     Art  is  devised  for  the 
correction  of  those  errors  into  which  a  man's 
senses  lead  him,   errors  which,  uncorrected, 
gather  into  a  crust  upon  his  soul  and  prevent 
his    entering    into    communication    with    his 
fellow-men.     Good  art  dissolves  such  errors; 
bad  art  multiplies  them.     Bad  art  has  always 
been  used  as  an  escape  from  life;  good  art 
admits  of  no  escape  and  forces  a  man  to  see 
himself  in  a  glass  clearly.     A  bad  man  likes 
bad  art,  for  good  art  shows  him  to  himself  as 
grotesque,  and  he  flies  from  the  reflection  and 
does  his  best  to  procure  the  suppression  of  the 
artist,  and  fees  unscrupulous  men  to  show  him 
a  lying  and  flattering  reflection.     Fortunately 
there  are  no  absolutely  bad  men,  and  the  great 
secret  society  of  the  artists,  the  most  powerful 
secret  society  in  the  world,  because  it  is  open 
and  the  master  of  time  and  death,  has  been 
3  ^  able 


able  wisely  and  surely  to  organize  so  that 
good  art  survives,  while  bad  art  is  borne  away 
on  the  backward  movement  of  time.  There 
is  a  constant  succession  of  men  bad  enough — 
snobs,  arrivists,  speculators,  egoists — to  hold 
up  the  lying  mirror  of  bad  art,  but  ever  the 
true  mirror  of  good  art  wins  more  to  turn  to  it 
and  to  see,  as  they  gaze,  all  that  they  thought 
hafeh  and  pitiless  and  cruel  melt  away  to  leave 
an  image  of  pure  beauty.  This  change  is  not 
in  the  mirror  but  in  the  minds  of  those  who 
look,  and  once  it  has  been  brought  about,  they 
can  no  more  fall  back  into  those  errors  of  the 
senses,  towards  deliverance  from  which  the 
whole  activity  of  mankind  has  from  the  very 
beginning  been  directed,  and  they  move  into 
the  vanguard  of  the  march  towards  the  im- 
mortality of  the  free  spirit  of  man.  The  con- 
structive work  of  the  world  is  directed  by  the 
artists.  Scientists,  inventors,  engineers,  manu- 
facturers, organizers,  even  wholesale  grocers, 
do  their  bidding,  though  they  have  no  taste 
for  poetry  or  painting  or  music  or  sculpture 

4 


and  believe  that  the  laws  which  govern  their 
success  or  failure  are  purely  economic.  The 
business  is  always  the  outcome  of  the  dream. 
^  There  was  bound  to  come  a  point  in  human 
progress  when  the  dream  and  the  business 
should  of  moral  necessity  begin  to  approach 
each  other  more  nearly,  when  such  a  degree  of 
material  liberty  should  be  reached  as  would 
be  intolerably  empty  without  its  complement 
of  spiritual  liberty,  without,  that  is,  the  joy 
which  is  the  outcome  of  those  two  liberties. 
It  is  of  small  immediate  consequence  to  the 
man  who  is  the  slave  of  the  business  whether 
the  dream  be  true  or  no.  He  had  liefer  be 
drugged  with  lies  than  made  to  see  and  feel 
his  slavery,  be  it  in  poverty  or  in  wealth.  So 
long  as  a  man  is  the  victim  of  the  tyranny  of 
the  necessary  material  work  of  the  world,  he 
cannot  have  the  energy  to  desire  the  truth,  and 
to  appease  the  restricted  and  small  appetite 
of  his  mind  the  sweetmeats  of  untruth  will 
seem  to  suffice,  though  such  debauchery  must 
bring  its  inevitable  consequence  of  atrophy 
5  ^and 


and  spiritual  death.  On  the  other  hand  it  is 
rarely  that  the  diseased  appetite  is  so  far  gone 
as  to  be  beyond  cure,  and,  outside  the  deliber- 
ate exploiters  of  humanity,  there  can  be  very 
few  men  who  are  impervious  to  the  truth  of 
art  and  the  truth  of  life. 
%  Now,  for  the  organization  of  the  forces 
of  truth  there  is  one  machine  to  hand,  the 
theatre,  in  which,  properly  controlled,  all  the 
arts  can  find  the  freedom  and  the  strength  of 
co-operation.  There  is  no  other  machine. 
The  Churches  long  ago  adopted  the  methods 
of  the  theatre  in  the  performance  of  a  series 
of  symbolic  plays,  in  which  audience  and 
actors,  or  congregation  and  priests,  collabo- 
rate in  worship  of  the  Universal  Presence. 
These  performances,  these  symbolic  plays, 
however,  have  become  poisoned  with  dogma 
mechanically  and  unintelligently  repeated, 
politics  crystallized  and  formulated,  and  fixed 
ethical  ideas.  They  have  been  debased,  and 
not  the  Universal  Presence  but  the  symbol 
Is  worshipped,  and,  for  long  enough,  there  has 
6 


been  no  room  in  the  Church  for  art,  and  such 
art  as  has  been  able  to  creep  in  has  been 
screwed  down  to  fit  the  Church's  formula. 
%  Neither  for  long  enough,  and  for  similar 
reasons,  has  there  been  room  for  art  in  the 
theatre,  where  also  the  machinery  consists  of 
collaboration  between  audience  and  perform- 
ers in  worship,  /.  e.  the  creation  of  joy  in  the 
Universal  Presence.  In  the  theatre  as  in  the 
Church  the  machinery  is  abused,  and  not  joy, 
but  animal  laughter  or  sentimental  tears  only 
are  created.  The  use  of  the  machinery  of 
both  Church  and  theatre  is  inartistic  and 
therefore  irreligious.  The  one  begets  un- 
wholesome fear  and  dread,  the  other  frivolity 
and  a  spirit  of  mockery;  and  fear  and  mockery 
make  of  human  beings  an  easy  prey  to  the 
forces  of  evil. 

^  In  the  present  state  of  society  everybody, 
except  a  few  artists,  is  both  exploiter  and 
exploited,  so  that  the  energy  of  the  human 
race  runs  in  a  vicious  circle  and  is  hardly  at  all 
productive  of  sound  achievement;  profits  are 
7  ^  estimated 


estimated  only  in  terms  of  money  and  every 
standard  is  falsified.  The  majority  of  men 
are  mimetic  and  slaves,  where  they  should  be 
free  and  creative  of  love,  joy,  affection  and 
friendship,  of  which  great  things,  in  their 
fight  against  evil,  art  is  the  by-product  and 
undying  memorial.  The  standards  natural  to 
mankind,  the  standards  of  our  inborn  joy,  can 
only  be  restored  by  the  artists,  and  by  the 
artists  in  co-operation  and  in  possession  of 
an  integral  part  of  the  social  machine — either 
the  Church  or  the  theatre,  or  both.  Social 
evolution  follows  the  evolution  of  art. 
Hitherto  it  has  followed  at  a  distance,  at  the 
distance  of  several  generations;  but  a  great 
change  has  come  over  the  world.  Hopes,  be- 
liefs, prejudices,  ideas,  that  once  sufficed  for 
a  whole  generation,  are  now  exhausted  in  five 
years.  Men  are  excited,  restless,  busy,  per- 
turbed, certain  of  new  conquests,  yet  impatient 
to  appraise  their  value.  We  have  entered  the 
Promised  Land.  The  great  men  of  the  Vic- 
torian Age  had  a  vision  of  it  from  Mount 
8 


Nebo.  We  are  still  too  thrilled  with  the  de- 
light and  novelty  of  it  all.  We  have  re- 
nounced their  vision  and  are  occupied  with 
detail,  with  the  gardens,  and  the  vineyards, 
and  the  partition  of  the  land;  we  are  bewil- 
dered too  to  find  that  the  processes  of  our  exist- 
ence are  going  on  unchanged,  bringing  the 
same  satisfactions  and  the  same  complications, 
the  same  joys  and  sorrows,  as  in  the  wilderness. 
We  had  hoped  to  find  ourselves  different  and 
lol  we  are  the  same,  only  with  a  more  urgent 
need  of  authority,  a  more  imperative  and 
crushing  desire  to  discover  the  truth  of  our- 
selves, the  extent  of  our  capacity,  and  our 
exact  relation  to  the  powers  that  brought  us  to 
such  might  and  dominion.  We  are  being 
forced  to  admit  the  authority  and  the  divine 
truth  of  art,  to  perceive  that  the  inspiration  of 
Beethoven,  for  instance,  is  no  less  authentic 
than  that  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  and  His 
Apostles.  In  such  necessity,  we  can  no  longer 
be  content  with  a  social  evolution  remotely  de- 
pendent upon  the  evolution  of  art  through  the 
9  ^scattered 


scattered  efforts  of  artists  working  in  isolation 
and  wretchedness.  We  are  forced  to  turn  to 
them  for  joy  and  enlightenment  and  disci- 
pline, for  all  that  feeds  and  sustains  our  irriag- 
ination.  It  is  not  enough  for  us  to  turn 
individually,  each  man  seeking  out  this  book 
or  that  picture.  We  live  in  herds;  our  joy 
must  be  collective,  and  collectively  we  must 
turn  to  those  men  in  whom  joy  is  strongest, 
those  men  who  have  the  art  to  share  their  joy 
with  us. 

%  This  desire,  this  impulse  of  ours,  will  meet 
the  desire  and  the  impulse  of  the  artists  in  the 
theatre  and  we  shall  make  of  it  a  place  of 
worship,  of  worship  delightful  and  amusing 
and  joyous  and  various,  so  that  it  will  become 
the  very  heart  and  centre  of  human  society, 
from  which  all  our  activities  will  radiate. 
Just  as  the  heart  renews  and  purifies  the  blood, 
so  will  the  theatre  renew  and  purify  human 
energy.  Pure  in  its  source,  human  energy  is 
contaminated  and  clogged  by  fixed  ideas,  the 
debased    formulae    of    the    Church,    with    its 

10 


exaltation  of  fear,  and  the  horrid,  mocking 
spirit  of  bad  art,  and  therefore  all  its  products 
are  impure.  There  is  nothing  invented  or 
contrived  for  the  well-being  of  human  kind 
but  it  is  instantly  abused.  Politicians,  philos- 
ophers, and  reformers  are  for  ever  trying  to 
force  systems  of  thought,  of  social  existence, 
of  economics,  upon  human  life  from  without, 
only  to  see  them  absorbed  and  swept  along  by 
the  circular  stream  of  exploitation.  Purifica- 
tion can  only  come  from  within. 

II 

%  IT  is  the  artists  who  have  led  us  to  this 
Promised  Land  of  the  twentieth  century,  the 
artists  who  have  landed  us  in  this  chaos  where- 
in heatedly  we  talk  of  wars  and  industrial 
strife  and  social  injustice,  the  artists  who  step 
by  step  have  dragged  us  up  from  brutal  ac- 
ceptance of  the  world's  extremities  of  heat  and 
cold  and  hunger  and  thirst,  to  the  confused 
civilization  which  is  the  delight  of  the  eco- 
nomic mind.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt 
II  ^that 


that  they  will  lead  us  further  yet  and  give  us 
the  reality  rather  than  the  dream  of  human 
brotherhood.  In  the  meantime  we  have  the 
right  to  ask  and  we  do  ask  for  as  much  fun  by 
the  way  as  can  be  procured.  We  look  to  the 
artists  not  only  for  vision  but  for  amusement. 
We  are  so  eager  for  it  that  we  are  over-tolerant 
and  suffer  the  charlatan  to  deceive  us  rather 
than  discard  anything  that  is  presented  to  us 
for  delight.  The  food  of  our  minds  is  more 
adulterated  than  the  food  of  our  bodies.  Our 
large  acceptivity  makes  it  always  difficult  for 
the  artist  to  establish  his  ascendancy  over  us, 
but  only  so  and  not  otherwise  can  the  artist 
obtain  the  fierce  conflict  within  himself  which 
shall  forge  his  dream  and  his  delight  into  such 
a  form  that  it  shall  pass  into  the  world's  cur- 
rency. Once  his  ascendancy  is  established  we 
accept  the  artist's  vision  and  have  it  stated  and 
restated  in  a  thousand  different  forms  by 
minor  artists  and  ephemeral  amuseurs  until, 
in  the  course  of  social  evolution,  we  outgrow 
it,  and  turn  to  a  vision  greater  still,  or,  at  least, 

12 


to  a  vision  set  forth  in  terms  more  intelligible 
to  our  new  temper. 

%  We  have  outgrown  the  vision  by  which 
we  lived  in  the  wilderness.  We  are  looking 
for  new  vision  in  everything.  As  we  have 
found  none  in  the  theatre,  it  has  lost  its  im- 
portance for  us,  even  as  a  place  of  light  amuse- 
ment. The  anarchy  of  the  theatre  has  been 
the  opportunity  of  the  music-hall,  which,  dur- 
ing the  last  ten  years,  has  been  organized, 
rudely  but  generously,  so  that  it  has  become, 
after  a  fashion,  the  vehicle  of  expression  of 
the  untempered  genius  of  the  race.  All  the 
best  and  most  spontaneous  acting  in  England 
is  to  be  found  in  the  music-hall,  where  the 
people  can  see  the  wonder  of  their  own  de- 
light in  material  things.  You  shall  see  the 
First  and  Second  Grave-digger  in  the  music- 
halls,  but  in  that  air  Hamlet  cannot  breathe. 
There  is  no  space  for  brooding  here,  nor  in 
these  vast  vulgar  palaces  can  the  spirit  of 
tragedy  or  the  spirit  of  comedy  have  its  dwell- 
ing. It  is  the  renown  more  than  the  art  of 
13  ^  Sarah 


Sarah  Bernhardt  that  fills  the  Coliseum.  An 
audience  is  easily  hypnotized  by  a  reputation, 
as  easily  as  the  possessor  of  it.  To  the  music- 
hall  the  people  bring  all  their  naive  credulity, 
all  their  prejudice,  all  their  superstition,  and 
these  receive  good  measure  of  fun  and  pathos' 
pressed  down  and  brimming  over. 
^  The  theatre  cannot  compete  with  the  music- 
hall.  It  must  give  its  audiences  finer  fare, 
the  food  without  which  the  race  and  its  civil- 
ization must  perish,  the  food  of  the  imagi- 
nation. The  imagination's  appetite  is  not 
touched  by  the  music-hall.  It  is  the  privilege 
of  refined  and  disciplined  artists  to  satisfy  it. 
It  is  the  highest  of  all  human  privileges,  for, 
without  imagination,  a  man  cannot  live;  he 
can  only  play  at  living,  a  game  which,  as  it 
may  last  for  sixty  years,  is  apt  to  become  tedi- 
ous and  to  lead  to  agonies  of  satiety,  exhaustion 
and  profound  dissatisfaction.  The  theatre, 
like  the  music-hall,  must  give  pleasure,  but  a 
finer,  a  higher,  and  a  keener  pleasure.  It  has 
only  the  same  machinery  to  hand — that  can 
14 


be  developed  but  not  altered — but  it  must  use 
it  with  more  subtlety  and  with  greater  skill 
and  cunning:  it  must  be  under  the  control  of 
finer  brains.     To  draw  a  rough  distinction — 
the  machinery  of  the  music-hall  may  use  its 
men,  but  the  men  of  the  theatre  must  use  its 
machinery.     The     music-hall     asks     for     no 
vision  in  its  artists,  who  will  remain  carica- 
turists ;  the  theatre,  if  it  is  to  live,  must  have 
the  service  of  men  with  vision,  men  with  the 
power  beautifully  to  share  their  vision  with 
their  audiences,  whose  spirit  during  the  per- 
formance will  be  set  free  by  the  dissolution 
of  their  prejudices  and  superstitions,  led  for 
the  space  of  a  few  hours  to  forgetfulness  of 
self  and  sent  back  into  life  enriched  by  imag- 
inative experience,  in  courage  renewed,  and 
therefore  more  capable  of  facing  and  grap- 
pling   with    life's     responsibilities.     In    this 
sharing  in  a  vision  of  beauty,  in  this  communal 
confirmation  of  the  instinctive  knowledge  of 
truth    that  lies   deep    in    the  heart   of   every 
human  being,  consists  the  joy  of  the  theatre. 
15  «IIt 


It  is  this  joy  that,  most  often  subconsciously, 
every  unspoiled  and  unsophisticated  playgoer 
looks  for,  hopes  for,  and  thrills  to  as  he  settles 
in  his  seat,  and  already,  before  the  curtain 
rises,  begins,  out  of  the  information  supplied 
on  the  programme,  to  create  for  himself  the 
wonderland  story  in  which  marvellously  he  is 
to  live  and  suffer  and  rejoice.  It  is  this  joy 
that  for  one  reason  or  another — (a  study  of 
the  newspapers  will  supply  them) — he  is  most 
often  denied  either  wholly  or  in  part.  If  the 
theatre  is  a  place  of  art,  as  not  even  the  most 
fashionable  actor  dares  deny  that  it  should  be, 
it  is  its  function  to  present  a  picture,  as  it  were, 
in  the  round,  not  of  that  life  which  the  play- 
goer can  see  in  the  streets  or  the  law-courts  or 
his  own  or  his  friends'  houses,  but  an  abstrac- 
tion, a  sublimation  of  life,  which  shall  delight 
him  first  of  all  by  intensely  amusing  him  and 
then,  by  confirming  his  instinctive  knowledge 
of  life,  giving  the  lie  to  the  impression  he  has 
of  it  through  his  senses  and  his  limited  capac- 
ity for  experience. —  (The  average  man's 
i6 


existence  does  not  express  his  vitality;  the 
artist  furnishes  him  with  another  sphere  in 
which  to  live,  in  which  also  to  correct  the 
mischances  and  distortions  of  his  mind.)  — 
The  theatre  must  not  be  like  "life":  it  must 
be  like  the  theatre,  that  is,  like  the  ideal  the- 
atre, or  as  near  to  it  as  the  limitations  of  the 
artists  in  control  of  it  will  allow.  In  any  case 
it  should  always  transcend  the  limitations  of 
its  audience. 

Ill 
^  IT  is  often  objected  that  the  theatre  cannot 
have  the  standards  of  the  other  arts  since  in 
its  collective  appeal  it  is  dependent  for  its 
existence  upon  the  capricious  approbation  of 
the  public,  and  that  it  is  unreasonable  to  ex- 
pect any  large  body  of  men  to  understand  and 
appreciate  a  work  of  art  until  it  is  a  little 
swathed  about  with  tradition  and  toned  down 
with  the  dust  of  time.  But  it  is  precisely  in 
the  theatre  that  a  work  of  art  can  be  most 
nearly  approached  by  the  ordinary  mind,  be- 
17  ^  cause 


cause  it  is  most  fondly  familiar  with  the 
theatre  and  is  there  fortified  by  the  presence 
of  other  ordinary  minds  all  concentrated  on 
the  same  object.  For  this  reason,  if  the  artist's 
vision  be  translated  into  terms  of  the  theatre, 
into  a  fable,  into  symbols  capable  of  treat- 
ment by  the  machinery  of  the  theatre  there 
will  be  nothing  or  little  in  it  that  cannot  be 
apprehended  through  the  emotional  response 
of  the  audience.  For  the  artist  of  the  theatre 
the  essential  is  that  he  should  trust  his  audi- 
ence, as  Shakespeare  trusted  his,  and  as  smaller 
writers  for  the  stage  do  not  trust  theirs.  It  is 
only  in  such  trust  that  drama  in  all  its  degrees 
and  forms,  from  tragedy  down  to  farce  and 
burlesque,  can  be  created;  without  it  there 
can  be  nothing  but  the  ingenious  manipulation 
of  tricks  and  common-form  situations  and 
characters,  eked  out  with  resplendent  trim- 
mings, as  in  one  school  in  the  modern  theatre, 
or,  as  in  another,  with  exposition  of  irrelevant 
ideas  or  criticisms  of  the  accidental  and  pass- 
ing phenomena  of  existence.  In  either  case 
i8 


there  must  be  in  the  audience  so  dealt  with  a 
sense  of  disproportion,  for  the  machinery  of 
the  theatre,  the  vitality  and  mental  energy  in 
an  audience,  are  much  too  great  to  be  used  for 
anything  save  the  purposes  of  drama,  which  is 
the  creation  of  another  life  beyond  life  and 
yet  of  it,  informing  it,  casting  back  a  radiance 
upon  it  and  revealing,  if  not  its  purpose,  at 
least  its  force  and  intensity.  Failing,  under 
pressure  of  divers  necessities,  to  perceive  this 
purpose,  or  to  move  towards  it,  the  directors 
of  the  modern  theatres  have  come  to  a  sort  of 
compact  with  their  indulgent  and  ever-chang- 
ing public,  that  the  theatre  shall  be  used  only 
for  laughter,  in  season  and  out.  That  were 
well  enough  if  such  laughter  were  provoked 
honestly  and  in  sheer  fun,  but  in  the  decadent 
theatre  of  London,  New  York  and  Paris  real 
fun  is  far  to  seek  and  there  is  a  grim  trade  in 
laughter,  in  joyless  mirth,  relieved  only  here 
and  there  by  the  native  drollery  of  some  indi- 
vidual performer,  who,  relying  solely  upon 
his  own  personah'ty,  fighting  against  the  soul- 
19  ^  less 


less  organization  which  brings  him  into  the 
public  view,  is  soon  exhausted  and  brought 
either  to  impotence  or  to  a  dull  conventional- 
ization of  his  humour.  And  so  it  is  with  all 
talent,  of  actors  and  dramatists  alike;  it  is 
sacrificed  to  this  base  compact  and  trade  in 
laughter.  And  yet  there  comes  to  the  theatre 
a  succession  of  new  generations  of  playgoers, 
audiences  potentially  fine  and  alert,  bringing 
to  their  pleasure  a  naive  and  almost  joyous 
quality,  believing  in  the  heroes  and  heroines, 
being  hypnotized  by  the  charm  and  glitter  of 
the  machinery  and  not  at  all  critical  of  the  use 
of  it  that  they  find,  finally  suffering  disillusion 
and  turning  away  to  the  music-hall  and  to 
literature  and  the  other  arts.  Not  yet  has 
there  arisen  in  the  theatre  an  artist  or  a  band 
of  artists  strong  enough  to  meet  a  new  genera- 
tion of  playgoers  and  to  whip  their  enthusiasm 
and  delight,  their  desire  for  joy  into  joy,  upon 
the  wave  of  which  both  can  be  carried  to 
higher  and  yet  higher  and  more  magnificent 
achievement.     Not  yet.  .  .  .  But  there  is  con- 

20 


tinual  effort  and  continual  striving,  a  steady 
stream  of  hope  and  desire.  More;  there  is  in 
many  hearts  and  minds  the  faith  that  such  a 
thing  will  be,  faith  that,  once  springing  forth 
in  mind  and  heart,  never  yet  failed  to  find  its 
way  into  the  world  of  form.  We  are  only  at 
the  beginning.  We  have  only  just  entered  the 
new  region  of  the  mind.  Consider  our  habits, 
how  we  live.  Rightly  or  wrongly — (and 
when  all  is  told,  will  it  not  be  seen  to  be 
right?) — we  have  gathered  ourselves  into 
great  cities  and  huge  companies  of  men,  where 
we  live  under  a  constant  stress  and  pressure 
of  circumstances  and  hurried  human  contact, 
and  we  are  engaged,  each  of  us,  in  work  so 
specialized  that  we  cannot  perceive  its  effect 
upon  the  whole,  or,  indeed,  its  effect  upon  our 
own  existence,  save  that  it  procures  us  bread 
and  living;  we  have  made  it  easy  to  pass  out 
of  these  cities,  to  move  from  one  to  the  other, 
and  we  have  established  communications  with 
all  parts  of  the  world;  our  life  reacts  upon 
the  lives  of  the  nations  our  neighbours,  upon 
21  ^5  the 


the  lives  of  nations  once  thought  of  dimly  as 
barbarians,  and  therefore  hardly  kin  with  us 
at  all;  each  day  the  new  facts,  the  events  of 
the  world  are  presented  to  us;  the  life  of  the 
individual  touches  the  life  of  humanity  at  so 
many  points  as  to  make  selection  and  action 
well-nigh  impossible  except  through  habit  and 
under  the  constraint  of  the  general  action. 
Such  an  existence  has  produced  excitement,  a 
desire  to  know  more,  an  appreciation  of  the 
relation  of  the  individual  to  the  race,  and  an 
eagerness  for  better  fellowship — in  fine,  curi- 
osity; instinct  urging  every  individual  to  for- 
tify himself  for  the  larger  life  which  dimly  he 
perceives  to  be  opening  up  before  him.  In- 
stinct lands  the  individual  in  strange  places, 
but  always  he  is  seeking  one  thing  only — 
vitality,  with  which  to  withstand  the  strain  of 
his  existence.  He  is  seeking  genius,  and  he 
welcomes  everything  that  helps  or  seems  to 
help  him  to  understand  it  and  make  some  of 
it  his  own.  There  is  professorial  authority 
for  saying  that  no  man  destitute  of   genius 

22 


could  live  for  a  day.  It  should  not  be  neces- 
sary to  back  such  a  statement  with  authority, 
professorial  or  other,  so  evident  is  its  truth 
from  each  man's  knowledge  of  himself.  Yet 
the  word  "genius"  has  been  so  misappropriated 
and  abused  by  quacks  and  charlatans  that  the 
busy  layman  starts  from  it,  for  he  is  "once  bit- 
ten, twice  shy"  and  is  fearful  of  spontaneity 
in  all  its  forms,  fearful,  while,  in  spite  of 
himself,  he  craves  for  it.  "Genius  is  spon- 
taneity, the  life  of  the  soul  asserting  itself 
triumphantly  in  the  midst  of  dead  things." 
Vision  is  as  much  a  natural  function  of  man 
as  digestion ;  vision  is  that  function  which 
raises  a  man  above  the  rest  of  creation,  and,  if 
it  be  not  exercised,  produces  the  most  disas- 
trous results  upon  the  health  of  body  and  mind. 
Artists  are  those  who,  by  fidelity  to  their 
genius,  their  vision,  preserve  their  health,  and, 
in  so  doing,  help  to  maintain  the  health  of  the 
body  politic  and  give  it  a  standard  of  health. 
An  artist  is  not  a  creature  apart;  he  is  a  hu- 
man being  who  is  human.  He  lives  by  cour- 
23  ^agc 


age  where  others  live  by  fear.  His  free 
genius — free  in  articulation — sounds  the  cry 
of  "Onward!  Upward!"  to  the  stifled  and  over- 
laid genius  in  common  men. 
^  Above  all  things  men  desire  health.  Only 
genius  can  give  it  them.  The  peasant,  the 
savage  existence  affords  no  sufficient  expres- 
sion for  a  man's  power  of  life  or  his  religious 
aspiration.  Genius  has  led  him  to  civiliza- 
tion, made  life  a  finer  instrument  for  the  ex- 
pression of  the  reality  from  which  it  springs, 
but  has  not  yet  taught  him  how  to  use  it,  how 
even  to  use  that  which  he  has  so  that  he  may 
not  be  defeated  by  that  which  he  shall  have 
hereafter,  or  how  to  make  his  own  small  life 
harmonious  with  the  great  Being  of  which  it 
is  a  part. 

^  Ordinary  men  are  deluged  day  by  day  with 
facts.  They  need  a  touchstone  which  can  en- 
dow them  with  meaning,  kindle  them,  make 
them  pregnant  with  significance  for  each  man 
according  to  his  needs.  To  such  a  state  of 
mind  no  man  can  be  brought  except  in  that 
24 


mood  and  condition  of  pleasure  which  de- 
lights him  into  receptivity  and  pure  accept- 
ance, that  mood  in  which  he  feels  ''smil- 
ingly from  top  to  toe,"  an  easy,  delicious, 
soaring  ecstasy.  That  he  can  only  come  by 
under  the  powerful  and  rare  domination  of 
art,  and  such  domination  is  most  easily  estab- 
lished over  him  in  the  theatre  where  he  is,  so 
to  speak,  abstracted  from  his  everyday  exist- 
ence and  forced  to  concentrate  his  mind  and 
his  senses  upon  one  object. 
^  Without  knowing  it,  the  modern  impulse 
of  exfoliation  is  taking  men  towards  the 
theatre.  Faith  will  not  admit  of  doubt  that, 
when  they  come  to  it,  they  will  find  it  equipped 
and  all  prepared  to  give  them  the  joy  that  they 
have  come  to  seek. 

^i  Life,  that  succession  of  opportunities,  has 
brought  us  to  a  greater  opportunity  than  has 
ever  been  offered  to  us  before.  We  shall  not 
fail  in  it  or  to  turn  it  to  account,  though  we 
may  fail  in  much  that  we  seem  to  perceive  in 
our  excited  dreams,  for  always  we  cast  our 
25  ^thoughts 


thoughts  beyond  what  we  can  perform,  be- 
yond what  it  is  meet  that  we  should  do.  Ever 
at  the  extremity  of  our  thoughts  there  lies  a 
thought  that  we  cannot  interpret,  though,  with- 
out its  light,  our  own  do  but  intensify  our 
darkness.  Only  through  the  refinement  and 
discipline  of  our  thoughts  in  art  can  we  ap- 
proach it.  In  the  effort  to  procure  this  refine- 
ment and  this  discipline  lies  the  health  that  all 
men  desire. 

IV 

^  ASSUMING  then  that  the  tremendous 
energy  now  manifesting' itself  in  human  affairs 
is  purposeful,  assuming  that  we  are  something 
more  than  the  victims  of  a  blind  force  in 
eruption,  that  we  are  capable  of  translating 
into  our  own  terms  something  at  least  of  the 
intentions  of  the  Contriver  of  the  Universe, 
and  have  organized  the  humbler  processes  of 
life  in  order  that  we  may  live  it  with  more 
profit  to  ourselves  and  greater  usefulness  to 
the  general  plan  of  which  we  are  and  must 
26 


ever  remain  in  ignorance;  assuming  that  in 
this  impulse  there  is  evidence  of  a  general 
desire  in  the  civilized  world  to  use  the  theatre 
as  a  place  of  delight  and  harmony  and  order, 
what  is  there  being  done  in  the  theatre 
to  meet  that  desire?  If  the  audiences  are 
emerging,  are  the  artists  prepared?  Are  they 
preparing?  Is  the  potential  desire  of  the  au- 
diences attaining  consciousness  in  them?  .  .  . 
The  answer  to  all  these  questions  is,  I  think, 
that  in  the  few  great  dramatists  of  genius, 
in  Shakespeare,  Sophocles,  Euripides,  Aris- 
tophanes, Ibsen,  Moliere,  Lope  da  Vega, 
Tschekov,  Synge,  consciousness  has  been 
reached  and  expressed  in  form,  while  the 
theatre  has  always  been  so  disorganized  as 
never  to  give  the  work  of  any  of  them  full 
value  in  performance.  For  generations  now 
in  his  own  country  the  plays  of  Shakespeare 
have  been  made  as  dull  as  his  own  Polonius; 
under  Irving  a  pageant  with  a  strange, 
interesting,  and  romantic  figure  wandering 
through  it;  under  his  followers  and  imitators, 
27  ^  a 


a  pageant.  It  is  probable  that  the  English 
theatre  will  not  be  able  to  exercise  its  real 
function  until  these,  the  greatest  plays  in  the 
world,  are  released  from  the  bad  tradition 
with  which  they  are  encrusted,  and  already, 
under  pressure  from  Russia  and  Germany, 
efforts  are  being  made  in  London  towards 
this  achievement,  and  as  the  dramatist  is  liber- 
ated, so  will  the  actor  be  thrust  from  the  place 
he  has  usurped  in  the  theatre's  economy,  from 
which  he  has  checked  and  repressed  all  de- 
velopment even  in  his  own  branch  of  the  art. 
In  the  theatre  the  interpreters  have  dominated 
the  creators  to  such  an  extent  that  really  crea- 
tive men  have  not  been  suffered  to  enter  it 
and  for  many  years  now  only  those  men  have 
written  plays  who  have  been  content  to  trim 
their  work  to  fit  the  personal  and  technical 
limitations  of  the  modish  actors  of  the  mo- 
ment, with  the  result  that  the  actors  have  be- 
come indolent  and  incapable  of  loyalty  even 
to  those  writers  whom  they  have  consented  to 
employ.  The  best  acting  is  that  which  most 
28 


loyally  serves  the  dramatist  and  the  better  the 
dramatist  the  better  will  the  acting  be. 
^  The   indolence  of   the  actor  has  brought 
about  decay  and  an  inevitable  reaction,  from 
which  has  arisen  a  functionary  called  the  pro- 
ducer, whose  duty  it  is  to  impose  discipline 
upon  the  performance  of  the  play,  to  grasp  the 
play's  imaginative  idea  and  rhythm  and  to  see 
to  it  that  nothing  in  the  work  of  actors  or  de- 
signers impedes  its  free  action  upon  the  minds 
of    the    audience.     Unfortunately    so    many 
modern  plays  have  neither  imaginative  idea 
nor  rhythm  that  the  producer  is  often  forced 
to  concern  himself  with  elaboration  of  detail 
and  the  contrivance  of  "business"  or  mechan- 
ical devices  to  disguise  the  poverty  of  the  ac- 
tion.    The  producer  should  simplify;  under 
modern  conditions,  as  a  rule,  he  does  but  com- 
plicate by  sacrificing  the  will  of  the  dramatist 
to  the  will  of  the  actors,  or,  again,  where  the 
producer   becomes    sufficiently   powerful,   he 
subordinates  the  will  of  both  dramatist  and 
actor  to  his  own  conception  and  concentrates 
29  ^on 


on  spectacle.  It  is  conceivable  that  the  pro- 
ducer himself  might  be  a  dramatist,  capable 
of  using  the  elements  of  the  art  of  the  theatre 
' — sound,  light,  and  movement — to  create  a 
drama,  employing  his  actors  only  as  puppets 
and  dispensing  with  the  written  drama  alto- 
gether. It  is  conceivable,  it  is  desirable,  and 
there  is  no  reason  why  such  a  drama  should  not 
coexist  with  the  drama  that  is  conceived  and 
elaborated  in  the  study  and  translated  into 
terms  of  the  theatre  through  the  work  of  pro- 
ducer, actors  and  decorators.  In  the  house 
of  art  there  are  many  mansions  and  there  is 
room  for  every  kind  of  work,  for  every  com- 
bination of  author,  producer  and  actor,  except 
that  which  delivers  the  theatre  into  the  hands 
of  the  actor,  and  on  condition  that  every  effort 
be  directed  towards  service  of  the  dramatic 
idea.  Where  the  producer  dispenses  with  the 
dramatist,  it  is,  or  should  be,  only  because  he 
himself  is  a  dramatist;  but  such  a  producer 
will  be  very  rare.  It  might  be  said  that  an 
actor  like  Irving  was  his  own  dramatist  and 
30 


there  would  be  some  truth  in  it.  Every  good 
music-hall  comedian — Mr.  Harry  Lauder  or 
Mr.  George  Formby — is  his  own  dramatist, 
as  Irving  was,  but  such  men  have  no  medium 
save  their  own  personalities  and  cannot  there- 
fore both  be  themselves  and  not  themselves, 
cannot  use  a  play  or  other  material  except  as 
an  adjunct  to  themselves  and  cannot  there- 
fore use  the  machinery  of  the  theatre  to 
create  an  artistic  whole.  For  such  men  the 
machinery  of  the  music-hall  has  been  evolved. 
They  can  charm  their  audiences,  hypnotize 
them,  but  they  cannot  give  them  joy  except 
their  charm  be  brought  into  relation  quite 
clearly  with  the  dramatic  idea,  which  is  a 
play. 

%  The  machinery  of  the  modern  music-hall 
has  been  created  for  those  artists  who  can 
work  only  in  the  medium  of  their  own 
personalities  acting  directly  upon  the  minds 
of  their  audiences  without  reference  to  any- 
thing else  or  to  anything  larger  than  them- 
selves. From  such  men  the  theatre  will  soon 
31  ^be 


be  entirely  delivered  by  the  music-hall,  which 
not  only  offers  them  greater  rewards  but 
relieves  them  of  responsibility  and  gives  them 
a  more  effective  method  of  attack  for  their 
purposes.  Relieved  of  these  men,  the  theatre, 
if  it  is  to  live  at  all,  must  be  served  by  drama- 
tists and  producers  and  producer-dramatists 
who  do  not  themselves  appear  upon  the  stage 
but  use  it  to  express  the  ideas  by  which  they 
are  possessed.  So  conducted  and  only  so  can 
the  theatre  meet  the  demands  made  on  it  by 
J.  M.  Synge  in  his  preface  to  The  Tinker's 
Wedding: 
%  "The    drama    is    made    serious — in    the 

\  French  sense  of  the  word — not  by  the  degree 
in  which  it  is  taken  up  with  problems  that 

1  are  serious  in  themselves,  but  by  the  degree 
in  which  it  gives  the  nourishment,  not  very 
easy  to  define,  on  which  our  imaginations 
live.  We  should  not  go  to  the  theatre  as  we 
go  to  a  chemist's  or  a  dram-shop,  but  as  we 
go  to  a  dinner,  where  the  food  we  need  is 
taken  with  pleasure  and  excitement. 

32 


%  "The  drama,  like  the  symphony,  does  not 
teach  or  prove  anything.  Analysts  with  their 
problems  and  teachers  with  their  systems  are 
soon  as  old-fashioned  as  the  pharmacopoeia 
of  Galen — look  at  Ibsen  and  the  Germans — 
but  the  best  plays  of  Ben  Jonson  and  Moiiere 
can  no  more  go  out  of  fashion  than  the  black- 
berries on  the  hedges. 

%  "Of  the  things  which  nourish  the  imagi- 
nation, humour  is  one  of  the  most  needful, 
and  it  is  dangerous  to  limit  or  destroy  it." 
%  To  handle  serious  drama  at  all,  to  present 
it  so  that  there  shall  be  no  discord  between 
the  dramatic  idea  and  its  interpretation,  a 
theatre  should  be  as  well-disciplined  as  a 
ship,  for  a  ship  it  is,  indeed,  one  in  which 
wondrous  voyages  are  taken  out  upon  the 
high  seas  of  the  mind.  Every  theatre  should 
be  under  the  control  of  a  director  who  is 
familiar  with  every  detail  of  its  construction, 
a  man  who,  without  being  himself  a  creative 
artist,  is  immediately  and  subtly  responsive 
to  art.  This  director  should  be  served  by  a 
33  ^number 


number  of  highly  trained  producers,  a  suffi- 
cient company  of  actors,  designers,  scene- 
painters,  machinists,  dressmakers,  all  of 
whom  should,  by  competent  work,  be  able  to 
earn  a  reasonably  secure  living,  independ- 
ently of  the  success  of  this  or  that  perform- 
ance, for,  if  he  be  harassed  by  financial 
anxiety,  no  man  can  give  of  his  best. 
%  Theatres  roughly  corresponding  to  these 
requirements  are  beginning  to  spring  up  in  the 
provinces  in  England,  in  Manchester,  Liver- 
pool, Birmingham,  also  in  Dublin,  and  there 
will  soon  be  no  great  industrial  centre  in  the 
country  that  has  not  its  own  theatre  more  or 
less  independent  of  the  London  commercial 
traffic  in  entertainments;  Russia  has  an  ad- 
mirable Art  Theatre  in  Moscow,  and  in 
Germany  they  are  building  in  many  towns 
small  theatres  for  modern  realistic  plays  and 
larger  houses  for  classic  and  poetic  drama; 
there  are  Little  Theatres  in  Chicago  and  New 
York  holding  out  ambitious  programmes; 
order  is  beginning  to  shine  through  chaos, 

34 


butjstill  the  workers  in  the  theatre  are  under 
the  tyranny  of  the  old  superstitions,  still 
lacking  courage  and  clear  perception  of  the 
new — the  age-old — spirit,  still  inclined  to  be 
content  with  success,  and,  when  they  have 
won  it,  be  fearful  of  losing  it  by  carrying 
the  idea  any  further — the  old  trouble  of  each 
revolutionary  leader  desiring  the  revolution 
to  end  in  himself,  so  that  Danton  must  gobble 
up  Mirabeau,  Marat  Danton,  Robespierre 
Marat,  and  so  on,  until  a  master  comes  w^hose 
tyranny  may  be  worse  than  the  old.  The 
trouble  in  the  theatre  is  that  each  ambitious 
revolutionary  specializes  and  admits  to  his 
theatre  only  a  special  audience,  by  his  fanat- 
icism holds  the  general  audience  at  arm's 
length,  wastes  energy,  and  in  the  end  destroys 
his  own  usefulness  by  raging  against  the 
barrier  of  his  own  erection,  the  barrier  be- 
tween himself  and  his  own  vision  and  work. 
And  meanwhile  the  old  enemy  of  artistic  en- 
thusiasm, the  spirit  of  mockery  inherent  in 
human  nature,  enters  into  the  fray  and  com- 
35  ^pletes 


pletes  the  work  of  destruction.  It  has  been 
so  in  every  effort  of  the  human  race  to  rise 
to  a  higher  level  of  existence.  Perhaps  it  is 
inevitable,  a  necessary  limitation  and  checlc, 
a  precaution  to  ensure  that  each  generation 
shall  have  its  allotted  task  and  shall  not  find 
it  too  easy.  All  human  activity  seems  to  run 
in  cycles — a  romantic  period  of  huge  en- 
deavour, a  classic  period  of  fruitfulness  and 
peace,  and  a  period  of  decadence  when  the 
race  descends  from  its  high  achievement  and 
plunges  down  into  the  lower  air,  only  to  rise 
to  achievement  higher  yet.  .  In  the  theatre 
we  are  at  the  beginning  of  a  romantic  period. 
The  time  is  passing  when  even  men  of  in- 
telligence and  culture  will  tolerate  in  the 
theatre  blunders  and  stupidities  which  would 
not  for  a  moment  be  endured  in  any  other 
art.  The  time  is  coming  when  the  theatre 
will  be  a  place  of  art,  an  exchange  of  ideas, 
the  subtlest  and  finest  engine  of  society,  the 
first  to  feel,  to  express  and  to  inform  new  de- 
sire, new  vision,  new  impulse  and  new  hope. 

36 


V 

^  THERE  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun, 
but  if  the  world  be  clearly  envisaged,  every- 
thing in  it  appears  eternally  new,  wonderful 
and  lovely.  The  future  can  only  be  built  up 
on  the  present  as  the  present  is  built  up  on 
the  past.  The  difficulty  in  discussing  any 
change,  particular  or  general,  is  that,  if  the 
arguments  for  it  be  presented  so  persuasively 
as  to  carry  conviction,  those  who  are  con- 
vinced begin  at  once  to  ask  and  to  look  for 
concrete,  shapely  results,  and  they  are  disap- 
pointed if  there  do  not  immediately  arise  a 
new  heaven  and  a  new  earth,  entirely  differ- 
ent in  quality  and  substance  from  the  old, 
and,  these  never  being  forthcoming,  they 
lose  heart  if  they  are  told  that  they  will  be 
lucky  to  have  the  change  becoming  per- 
ceptible in  their  grandchildren.  This  diffi- 
culty is  very  great  in  dealing  with  the  theatre, 
which  has  fallen  into  such  contempt  that  even 
the  best  of  those  who  work  in  it  hardly  be- 
lieve in  it  at  all,  and  certainly  have  no  con- 
37  ^?  fidence 


fidence  in  the  possibility  of  such  audiences  as 
would  make  a  real  theatre  feasible.  When 
the  enthusiast  upholds  a  glowing  picture  of 
the  future  of  the  theatre,  and  informs  his 
thrilling  auditors  that  it  is  a  matter  of  many 
generations,  then  their  hearts  sink  and  they 
look  back  and  say:  "Yes,  but  look  at  all  the 
movements  of  the  past  thirty  years.  They 
have  all  ended  in  the  very  thing  they  set  out 
to  destroy,  the  substitution  of  the  standards 
of  success  for  the  standards  of  art.  They 
have  all  ended  by  being  concerned,  not  with 
the  theatre,  but  only  with  its  appendages  and 
trimmings,  with  its  outward  aspect.  You 
may  change  the  outward  aspect  of  a  rotten 
thing,  you  have  to  change  it  for  each  genera- 
tion, but  what  is  the  use  of  dragging  in  ideals 
and  dreams  and  other  irrelevancies,  if  the 
thing  itself  remains  always  the  same?  And 
after  all,  if  things  never  change,  is  it  worth 
all  this  talk  and  all  this  effort  to  which  you 
are  trying  to  lead  us?"  ...  To  which  the 
reply    is    this:     "Things   always    remain  the 

38 


same  until  we  change,  and  that  we  cannot 
help  doing.  The  spirit  in  which  we  ap- 
proach the  world  and  all  in  it  is  for  ever  chang- 
ing as  we  change  and  grow  and  develop  new 
powers  of  life,  clearer  vision,  and  more  of 
what  Matthew  Arnold  called  'sweetness  and 
light.'  "  Every  new  development  that  takes 
place  within  us  is  infallibly  expressed  in  every 
one  of  our  institutions  and  in  the  use  we  make 
of  them.  Not  for  nothing  do  we  have  men 
of  genius.  Nor  for  nothing  have  we  had 
Blake,  Whitman,  Nietzsche,  and,  in  the 
theatre,  Shakespeare,  Wagner,  Ibsen.  Each 
of  these  men  has  found  new  joys  in  life  and 
by  his  work  has  made  the  world  free  of  them, 
at  the  cost  of  effort,  a  small  effort  compared 
with  the  mighty  struggles  that  first  wrested 
these  joys  from  life.  The  spirit  of  bold  and 
courageous  and  imaginative  development 
that  animates  all  men  of  genius  no  more  ends 
than  it  begins  with  them.  It  is  as  old  as  hu- 
manity. Through  the  ages  it  has  gathered 
consciousness  in  our  minds  and  hearts,  but 
39  <S|only 


only  here  and  there  has  it  found  full  expres- 
sion. Our  institutions  are  for  ever  being 
adapted  to  give  it  freer  scope,  but  they  are 
never  adapted  w^ithout  pain  and  suffering, 
without  injury  to  our  habits  or  damage  to 
vested  interests.  To  this  spirit,  to  the  genius 
of  the  human  race,  the  theatre  has  for  genera- 
tions been  closed.  Folly  and  cowardice  and 
egoism  and  vanity  have  barred  the  doors 
against  it,  and,  for  want  of  it,  the  theatre  has 
been  stricken  with  a  sickness  that  seems  mor- 
tal. Its  old  small  function  of  giving  light 
amusement  has  been  taken  from  it.  It  is 
stretching  its  limbs  for  the  exercise  of  its 
higher  function  of  giving  serious,  i.e.  imagi- 
native amusement.  It  is  still  under  the  stress 
of  revolt,  so  that  it  is  difficult  to  see  the  gleams 
of  that  joy  which  is  seeking  expression  in  it. 
Hardly  in  Europe  is  there  a  single  artist  of 
the  theatre  devoted  to  sane,  secure,  delighted 
and  delightful  achievement  in  his  art;  very 
few  are  there  indeed  who  are  beginning  to 
shake  free  of  the  realism  which  for  the  last 
40 


fifty  years  has  seemed  to  kill  the  joy  of  all 
the  arts,  while  in  truth  it  has  been  riddling 
and  scattering  the  false  joy  of  the  academies, 
and  leaving  art  at  rest  for  a  long  period  of 
incubation.  All  art  is  a  matter  of  convention, 
of  agreement  between  artist  and  public  as  to 
the  meaning  of  certain  symbols.  When  the 
current  symbols  grow  debased  and  lose  their 
shining  and  luminous  quality,  honest  artists 
return  from  their  art  to  life,  investigate  it, 
analyse  it,  mark  its  progress,  to  discover  why 
the  old  symbols  have  lost  their  meaning. 
Such  a  period  is  a  kind  of  winter:  plays,  nov- 
els, pictures,  music,  are  used  as  a  sort  of  seed- 
bed, in  which  hundreds  and  thousands  of 
germs  are  planted  from  which  in  the  spring — 
the  new  growth  of  art — only  the  healthiest 
stocks  will  be  selected.  It  has  been  finely 
said:  *'Why  weep  over  the  ruins  of  art? 
They  are  not  worth  it.  Art  is  the  shadow 
man  casts  on  nature.  .  .  .  From  time  to  time, 
a  genius,  in  passing  contact  with  the  earth, 
suddenly  perceives  the  torrent  of  reality  over- 
41  ^  flowing 


flowing  the  continents  of  art.  The  dykes 
crack  for  a  moment.  Nature  creeps  in 
through  a  fissure.  But  at  once  the  gap  is 
stopped  up.  It  must  be  done  to  safeguard  the 
reason  of  mankind.  It  would  perish  if  its  eyes 
met  the  eyes  of  Jehovah.  Then  once  more 
it  begins  to  strengthen  the  walls  of  its  cell, 
which  nothing  enters  from  without  except  it 
have  first  been  wrought  upon."  .  .  .  Just  as 
without  habit  a  man  cannot  but  go  mad,  so 
without  convention  an  artist  cannot  shape  his 
inspiration  into  a  definite  image  for  the  minds 
of  his  audience,  and  just  as  a  man  becomes 
the  slave  of  his  habits,  so  an  artist  may  become 
the  slave  of  his  conventions,  and  his  work, 
reaching  the  other  extremity,  becomes  mean- 
ingless. In  revolt  against  the  tyranny  of  old 
conventions  an  artist  is  too  much  beset  by 
moods  of  self-distrust  to  be  able  to  win 
through  to  the  mood  of  serenity  in  which 
works  of  art  alone  are  possible.  But,  in  the 
force  of  his  revolt,  he  may  achieve  works 
valuable  in  destructive  quality,  or  in  the 
42 


marshalling  of  detail,  or  even  in  the  opening 
up  of  some  new  way  along  which  the  mind 
can  travel;  yet  all  such  work  cannot  be  pre- 
sented to  a  general  audience,  for  it  has  not 
the  basis  of  trust  and  confidence  upon  which 
artists  and  audiences  can  meet.  Such  work 
will  often  achieve  a  sort  of  success  of  fashion, 
but  it  can  never  achieve  the  success  of  art, 
which  has  hardly  a  worse  enemy  than  fashion 
with  its  snobbism  and  sheepish  insincerity. 
Whether  it  succeeds  or  no,  sincere  work  is 
always  valuable,  and  in  the  European  theatre 
there  is  abundance  of  such  busy,  sincere,  in- 
telligent work  as  to  justify  the  most  ardent 
hopes  that  at  last  the  sleeping  giant  of  the 
drama  is  stirring  to  his  waking  hour. 
^  The  French  are  a  great  analytical  people, 
the  testers  of  ideas  and  inspirations.  It  was 
a  Frenchman,  Edouard  Manet,  who  began 
the  liberation  of  modern  painting  from  the 
dominion  of  the  conventions  of  the  schools. 
It  was  a  Frenchman,  Villiers  de  I'lsle  Adam, 
who  was  the  greatest  and  most  vigorous  of 
43  %  the 


the  early  deliverers  of  the  drama  from  its 
captivity.  It  was  a  Frenchman  also  in  whom 
the  impulse  that  has  found  its  expression  in 
the  dancing  of  Isadora  Duncan,  the  Russian 
Ballet,  and  the  Eurhythmies  of  M.  Jacques 
Dalcloze,  first  reached  consciousness.  The 
intellectual  force  of  the  one,  the  instinctive 
and  emotional  force  of  the  other,  have  pro- 
duced two  great  streams  of  activity  in  the 
theatre,  the  realistic  and  the  spectacular,  both 
of  which  are  at  present  engaging  the  atten- 
tion of  Mr.  Granville  Barker  in  London, 
Herr  Max  Reinhardt  in  Berlin,  M.  Rouche 
in  Paris,  and,  the  greatest  of  all,  Stanislawski 
in  Moscow.  In  the  English-speaking  world 
the  dramatic  work  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw, 
Mr.  John  Galsworthy  and  Mr.  Granville 
Barker,  fortified  by  the  Irish  school  inspired 
by  Yeats  and  Synge,  has  led  to  the  establish- 
ment of  Repertory  Theatres  in  the  English 
provinces,  and  of  Little  Theatres  in  New 
York  and  Chicago.  The  Art  Theatre  in 
Moscow  is  devoted  chiefly  to  the  production 

44 


of  realistic  plays,  like  those  of  Tschekov  and 
Gorky,  but  this  theatre  has  also  the  distinc- 
tion of  being  the  first  to  have  a  Shakespearean 
production  by  Mr.  Gordon  Craig,  with  his 
newest  ideas  and  his  screens.  Germany  is 
perhaps  better  equipped  than  any  country  in 
the  number  of  its  advanced  theatres  and  in 
their  scientific  erection  and  their  furnishing 
to  meet  modern  requirements. 
^  Still,  with  all  this  business,  with  all  these 
manifestations  of  vitality,  the  theatre  is  only 
on  the  point  of  emerging.  It  is  still  far  from 
taking  its  rightful  place  in  the  life  of  the 
civilized  world.  Its  art  is  still,  as  it  were, 
suspended  between  life  and  the  old  conven- 
tions of  the  theatre.  The  dramatists  are  still 
too  timid,  too  self-conscious,  to  stand  on 
their  own  feet  as  dramatists,  to  do  their  work 
for  its  own  sake,  and,  with  the  exception  of 
a  few  young  men  who  are  groping  their  way 
to  a  poetic  drama,  they  seek  to  fortify  their 
plays  by  writing  them  with  reference  to  the 
problems  and  the  passing  ideas  and  excite- 
4^  ^  ments 


ments  of  the  day,  and  to  each  and  every  sug- 
gestion for  the  amelioration  of  life,  without 
considering  whether  these  things  tend  to  the 
improvement  of  their  art.  The  intellectual 
position  of  the  artist  is  and  will  be  for  many 
years  too  perilous  for  him  to  take  the  salto 
mortale  beyond  thought  and  beyond  analysis 
up  to  the  region  in  which  works  of  art  spring 
into  being,  and  in  his  immediate  predecessors 
there  has  not  been  any  achievement  solid 
enough  to  have  laid  the  suspicions  of  the 
public  and  dissipated  his  own  distrust  of  him- 
self and  so  with  irresistible  force  to  urge  him 
with  easy,  confident  mastery  of  himself  to 
mould  his  material  into  form.  In  the  theatre 
proper  in  this  country  there  has  as  yet  been 
no  work  done  that  can  be  regarded  as  free 
of  the  defects  inevitable  in  a  period  of  attack 
and  reconstruction, — want  of  form,  want  of 
humour,  want  of  serenity — no  work  that  really 
reaches  and  feeds  the  imagination  of  the 
people  and  gives  them  both  a  feeling  of 
security  and  a  footing  in  the  new  world  of 

46 


art,  to  the  opening  up  of  which  so  many  good 
lives  have  been  given.  From  the  opera,  how- 
ever, from  the  opera  turning  to  spectacle, 
has  come  work  which  really  is  achievement, 
work  in  which  the  modern  impulses  have  had 
the  freest  play  to  create  in  the  theatre,  in 
artists  and  audience,  the  nearest  approach  to 
the  joy  of  the  world's  seeking  that  has  yet 
been  forthcoming.  Painting  and  music  are 
without  doubt  the  healthiest  of  the  arts  in 
modern  Europe.  In  the  Russian  Ballet,  these 
two  arts,  at  their  most  advanced,  have  been 
admitted  to  the  theatre  and  turned  most 
richly  to  account  in  the  service  of  its  idea, 
its  purpose.  Not  all  the  productions  of 
the  Russians  have  been  satisfying,  but  in 
Petrouchka,  thanks  to  the  genius  of  Stravinsky 
and  Fokin,  painting  and  music,  interpreting 
and  being  interpreted  by  dancing  and  mim- 
ing, have  been  led  in  marvellous  proportion 
to  serve  the  central  dramatic  idea.  In 
Petrouchka  everything  serves,  nothing  im- 
pinges upon  the  effect  of  the  whole.  It  is 
47  ^shapely, 


shapely,  clear,  forceful  and  dynamic.  It 
shows,  better  than  any  other  piece  of  work  of 
the  last  ten  years,  the  capacity  of  the  theatre 
as  an  instrument  of  art,  and,  also,  in  its  almost 
perfection,  how  near  we  are  to  reaping  ♦he 
fruits  of  the  efforts  of  those  who  have  devoted 
their  energies  to  the  theatre's  redemption. 
Most  usefully  might  Petrouchka  be  com- 
pared to  Coppelia.  Each  is  excellent  of  its 
kind,  but  there  is  as  much  difference  between 
them  as  there  is  between  Gluck  and  Offen- 
bach, or  between  a  magnificently  ordered  din- 
ner and  a  meal  of  sweetmeats.  The  one 
inspires,  the  other  charms.  The  one  exists 
by  its  own  inspiration,  the  other  is  referable 
back  to  other  works  of  art  in  the  same  kind. 
Both  are  the  histories  of  dolls,  but  Petrouchka 
gains  in  intensity  as  a  criticism  of  life  by  so 
being;  the  other  is  not  far  from  remaining  al- 
together in  the  world  of  inanimate  and  con- 
trived things.  The  one  deals  with  life  at 
first  hand,  translating  it  almost  perfectly  into 
symbols,  while  the  other  deals  with  symbols 

48 


so  familiar  that  their  power  to  reflect  life  is 
dimmed. 

%  The  Russian  Ballet,  passing  from  capital 
to  capital,  has  given  the  workers  in  the  theatre 
the  inspiration  and  the  revelation  that  they 
needed  to  lift  them  beyond  their  experiments 
in  realism  and  analysis,  and  it  has  given  a 
new  zest  to  the  public  by  providing  them  with 
a  pleasure  keener  than  any  that  has  been 
known  in  the  theatre  for  generations,  a 
pleasure  so  keen  that  critics  and  public  are 
beginning  a  little  unjustly  to  ask  if  there  is 
really  any  greater  merit  in  the  politico-intel- 
lectual realism  of  the  modern  school  than  in 
the  clever  trickery  of  Scribe  and  Sardou. 
But,  after  a  period  of  decadence  and  inani- 
tion, art  must  force  its  way  back  to  life  before 
it  can  be  infused  with  the  vitality  necessary 
for  its  new  flight  towards  the  truth.  It  can 
only  do  so  slowly,  laboriously,  painfully, 
forcing  its  way  through  or  under  the  thou- 
sand and  one  obstacles,  often  taking  the  most 
surprising  turns  and  using  the  most  unex- 
49  ^  pectcd 


pected  means.  Art,  like  life,  is  not  reason- 
able. Like  life,  it  turns  even  decay  to  profit. 
Through  the  most  devious  ways  the  art  of 
the  theatre  has  forced  its  way  back  from  exile 
into  the  theatre,  bringing  with  it  colour  and 
music  and  painting  and  dancing,  intelligence, 
proportion,  imagination,  poetry,  the  coura- 
geous desire  and  hope  of  all  artists  to  serve 
the  drama  and  to  assist  in  laying  before  the 
world  such  a  feast  of  joy  and  loveliness  as 
men  have  hardly  ventured  to  dream  of  before. 
Best  of  all  is  the  knowledge  through  the  Rus- 
sian Ballet  that  the  world  is  prepared  to  re- 
joice in  the  feast  and  to  ask  for  more  and  more 
of  it,  all  as  rich  and  varied  and  life-giving  as 
possible. 

^s  At  the  risk  of  being  tiresome,  it  must  be 
repeated  that  the  feast  will  not,  cannot,  be 
new  in  substance.  The  human  race  has  many 
thousands  of  years  yet  to  live  before  it  can 
reach  a  spirit,  a  quality  of  genius,  higher  than 
that  of  Shakespeare  or  Sophocles  or  any  man 
of  supremity,  but,  whereas,  in  the  past,  the 
50 


feast  of  art  has  been  spread  out  over  immense 
spaces  of  time,  often  over  many  generations, 
now,  since  a  larger  proportion  of  men  are  ad- 
mitted to  art,  there  will  be  in  any  one  genera- 
tion sufficient  desire,  sufficient  aspiration  and 
ardour,  for  the  whole  feast  to  be  laid  before 
them.  That  there  will  be  sufficient  articulate 
genius  to  supply  the  demand  cannot  be 
doubted,  for  there  is  enough  unexplored  and 
uninterpreted  genius  in  Shakespeare  alone  to 
keep  many  generations  in  active  delight.  But 
the  seeming  swifter  passage  of  time — (due  to 
life's  greater  fullness) — must  necessitate  in 
the  theatre  finer  efficiency  and  skill  in  those 
men  of  talent  whose  work  it  is  to  state  and  re- 
state in  a  thousand  different  forms  the  divina- 
tion and  the  achievement  of  genius.  It  is  this 
greater  efficiency  in  the  men  of  talent,  in 
their  more  sensitive  response  to  the  animat- 
ing spirit  of  the  art  they  serve, — the  actors, 
the  producers,  the  decorators — that  will  make 
the  most  obvious  difference  between  the  new 
theatre  and  the  old,  for  in  their  harmonious 
51  ^co-operation 


co-operation  they  will  bring  forth  the  joy 
that  is  now  latent  in  the  theatre,  the  joy  that 
is  in  every  good  play,  every  sincere  piece  of 
acting,  every  genuine  design,  the  joy  which 
unfortunately  is  now  obscured  by  the  dis- 
location of  the  theatre's  machinery,  as  the 
result  of  which  nothing  is  ever  placed  or  ever 
wrought  to  its  finest  form,  and  everything  is 
sacrificed  to  individual  caprice  or  commercial 
rapacity.  For  all  that,  there  is  so  little  be- 
tween the  theatre  as  it  is  and  the  theatre  as 
it  might  be,  that  a  pufif  of  wind,  a  favourable 
accident,  a  sudden  turn  of  popular  favour 
could  at  any  moment  cause  it  to  veer  round 
and  show  its  true  face  to  the  world.  Until 
that  has  happened,  in  spite  of  all  the  honest 
endeavour  and  earnest  efifort  of  the  workers 
in  it,  the  theatre  can  only  continue  to  live 
the  stealthy  and  rather  parasitical  life  to 
which  it  has  been  condemned  by  modern  civ- 
ilization. 


52 


VI 

^  THE  art  of  the  theatre  is  a  combination 
of  many  arts  fused  by  the  dramatic  sense, 
without  which  the  result  of  combination  can 
only  be  a  compromise  as  dull  as  that  of  any 
club  or  society  of  men  which  has  lost  all  per- 
ception and  sense  of  the  idea  which  originally 
brought  them  together.  Without  the  dra- 
matic sense,  the  result  of  such  combination  of 
the  arts  can  only  appear  in  something  less  than 
each  art  separately;  like  a  committee,  the  in- 
telligence of  which  is  that  of  its  least  intelli- 
gent member  divided  by  the  number  of  its 
constituents.  Not  every  artist  has  the  dra- 
matic sense,  which  I  can  but  roughly  define 
as  an  instinctive  power  to  divine  and  lead 
and  merge  into  one  entity,  through  the  delight 
his  skill  can  give  to  their  senses,  the  collective 
vitality  of  an  audience.  He  is  a  man  of  the 
theatre  in  whom  this  power  is  sufficiently  de- 
veloped for  him  to  use  and  control  it  to  do  his 
will.  To  such  a  man  nothing  is  necessary 
save  a  stage  and  an  audience.  What  he  puts 
53  ^js  upon 


upon  the  stage,  whatever  combination  of 
sound,  light  and  movement,  will  be  so  manipu- 
lated as  to  be  recognizably  a  play,  that  is,  a 
microcosm  altogether  separate  from  the  uni- 
verse outside  and  yet  containing  in  its  essence, 
distilled  and  concentrated,  all  that  the  human 
mind  can  perceive  of  the  wonder,  the  power, 
and  the  glory  of  the  mysterious  authority  that 
lies  at  the  heart  of  all  things.  If  the  artist 
in  the  theatre  has  not  this  sense,  he  can  de- 
velop a  sense  of  the  theatre  and  learn  dexter- 
ously to  fob  his  audience  off  with  tricks  and 
to  lead  them  to  find  amusement  in  solemn  trav- 
esty. Between  these  two  processes  there  is  be- 
coming ever  more  apparent  a  differentiation 
as  sharp  and  yet  as  difficult  to  define  as  that 
between  journalism  and  literature.  These 
two  processes  can  hardly  avoid  being  hostile 
to  each  other,  but,  within  the  theatre,  there 
should  soon  be  an  end  of  stupid  quarrels  as  to 
what  kind  of  play  is  best  and  right,  and  we 
should  attain  a  generous  temper  to  admit  that 
all  kinds  of  play  are  good,  if  only  they  be  well 

54 


written,  well  produced,  well  acted.  Good 
plays  make  good  actors  and  good  audiences. 
When  an  audience  rises  from  a  good  play, 
it  always  declares  that  it  is  the  best  play  it 
has  ever  seen.  Dramatists  should  see  to  it 
that  there  is  rather  more  than  less  truth  in  this 
impression.  Audiences  never  know  whether 
they  have  been  delighted  with  the  play  or 
with  the  acting;  they  do  not  know  where  one 
ends  and  the  other  begins,  and  there  is  no  rea- 
son why  they  should.  They  go  to  the  theatre 
to  procure  delight;  if  they  get  it  in  any  con- 
siderable quantity,  they  go  again.  If  not,  not. 
It  is  an  old  saying  that  all  things  are  possible 
for  the  man  who  does  not  ask  for  credit  or 
rewards  for  what  he  does.  This  is  true,  and 
the  theatre  will  not  be  restored  to  health 
until  dramatists  and  actors  are  content  to 
take  the  fun  of  their  work  as  its  chief  re- 
ward. 

^  The  theatre  is  the  creation  of  the  story- 
telling instinct  joining  hands  with  the  rhyth- 
mic instinct  out  of  which   came  the   dance. 
55  ^The 


The  ordinary  mind  approaches  art  through 
story-telling  and  seeks  to  attach  a  story  to 
every  picture,  every  piece  of  music,  that 
pleases  it.  If  the  theatre  is  to  live  in  a  demo- 
cratic community  it  must  be  prepared  to  meet 
the  ordinary  mind  in  this  way.  In  the  theatre 
pictures,  music,  dancing,  as  many  arts  as  can 
be  usefully  employed,  are  attached  to  a  story 
and  woven  into  it  to  give  to  the  mind  of  the 
spectator  a  glorification  of  his  own  visions  of 
and  emotions  concerning  life.  At  its  barest, 
the  theatre  shows  the  common  man  his  own 
vision  familiarly,  without  elevation  or  depth. 
—  (The  corner-shop  widow  finds  melodrama 
"true  to  life.") — But  the  story-telling  instinct 
seeks  something  beyond  experience,  always 
something  marvellous;  it  seeks  experience 
kindled  by  imagination.  It  is  because  of  this 
constant  demand  for  imagination  and  the  re- 
jection of  everything  that  falls  short  of  it  that 
the  best  plays  survive,  while  ingenious  con- 
trivances masquerading  as  plays  are  like  the 
fashion  upon  which  they  come  into  being — 
S6 


they  live  but  for  a  day  and  thereafter  cannot 
escape  ridicule. 

^  The  essential  in  the  theatre  is  that  dramatic 
unity  which  can  only  be  achieved  by  dignity 
and  sincerity  resulting  in  the  simplicity  which 
is  the  stamp  of  art.  Once  this  unity  has  been 
perceived,  once  the  joy  of  it  has  been  tasted, 
no  man  can  be  content  with  anything  that  falls 
short  of  it,  or  at  least  of  aiming  at  it.  It  is 
precisely  in  the  theatre  that  this  joy  can  be 
made  accessible  to  all  men. 
^  The  conclusion  of  the  matter  is  this,  that 
out  of  the  confusion  of  the  theatre  the  drama 
is  beginning  to  emerge.  In  England  we  have 
the  finest  drama  in  the  world  upon  which  to 
build.  By  the  activity  of  the  theatre  in 
Europe,  in  almost  every  country,  we  are  be- 
ing forced  to  take  stock  of  our  heritage  and 
to  rescue  it  from  the  accumulation  of  false 
tradition  beneath  which  we  have  allowed  it 
to  be  buried.  Much  of  the  work  of  excava- 
tion has  been  done,  and  it  will  soon  be  pos- 
sible to  create  a  drama  and  a  theatre  worthy 
57  ^of 


of  Shakespeare,  Ben  Jonson,  Congreve  and 
Sheridan,  a  theatre  which  shall  give  back  to 
the  world  in  masterpieces  old  and  new  the 
joy  from  which,  in  its  fear  and  shame,  it  has 
for  too  long  turned  away.  Through  this  joy 
there  shall  breathe  again  such  a  spirit  of  de- 
light as  shall  at  last  justify  the  great  democ- 
racies of  the  modern  world.  The  theatre 
which  in  the  past  has,  in  Shelley,  Browning, 
Dickens,  Meredith,  rejected  so  much  genius, 
will  become  the  home  of  genius,  the  temple 
to  which  men  of  genius  and  talent,  whatever 
their  craft,  may  turn  in  the  certain  hope  of 
finding  a  welcome  and  freedom  and  space  in 
which  to  work  in  their  task  of  revealing  the 
world  in  all  its  glory  to  their  fellow-men. 

E  pur  si  muove. 


S8 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

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